Bøker i Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction-serien

From the author of "Frog", these short stories are about loss: culture, allurement, reliability, continuity, potency, companions, skill, child, parent, footing, prize, collection; as well as the flip-side of loss: imaginative recreation, creative refutation and self-destructive creation.

They may be sad too, but it is a dry-eyed melancholy that is no relation-or perhaps just a poor relation-to the air of "Danny Boy."

Water / Music embraces and celebrates life's mystery and the soul's repose amid "talismans at twilight, the whir of birds."

But most of all it is a highly entertaining series of all-too-plausible vignettes that shows off Stephen Dixon's remarkable talent at its best.

Sunflowers drenched in early evening sun; icy blue, explosive waves along the rocky shores of Maine; September cotton "like strange anachronistic snowin Tennessee-Anderson forges these images into deep ruminations on love, shame, delight, loss, and estrangement.

Now in paperback, In the Crevice of Time brings together 176 new and previously published poems by one of the most accomplished and most widely acclaimed poets of our time.

"-Bobbie Ann Mason"This is fiction of immense beauty, full of wisdom and informed by rare grace."-Steve Yarbrough

Words by the Water is particularly varied and unusually youthful and fresh.

Renowned for his translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the poems of Catullus, Martin brings the perspective of history to bear on the stuff of contemporary life.

Along the way, master poet John Bricuth treats readers to a sly, sarcastic-and sometimes deeply moving-look at storytelling, old-time religion, and the American way.

Belli, Octavio Paz, and Euripides, Future Perfect further establishes Charles Martin as a master of invention.

Ballyhoo offers a sobering examination of the tragicomic nature of the world.